[wellokpetejr]

I haven’t read the article because of the paywall.

Like most people I’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours getting good at something that employers pay me for. Outside of that, I’m no smarter at anything than any other person. And there is no way for me to spend thousands of hours learning what the best medical treatments are, how to make the best financial decision, the best way to raise kids, hire to work and manage teams remotely, etc.

The only way I can figure out how to deal with all the communications is to listen to experts. Why would I listen to anyone else who hasn’t the spent thousands of hours learning to be an expert? Obviously this doesn’t work perfectly all the time.

The problem seems to me we listen to our tribe/group/friends knowledge, even though the world has gotten too specialized for most of their ad hoc knowledge to be useful.

[peteradio]

As soon as you stop being critical of the experts they get swapped out for empty suits. There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of experts on anything novel. Experts are also tremendously cautious in the advice given where given your day to day risk tolerance it is a tremendous distraction to focus on one particular source of risk. Probably it makes sense for some people to just follow the given guidance but for some others it induces too much cognitive dissonance. I would hate to live in a world full of mandates based on hot off the presses science.

[wellokpetejr]

Healthy skepticism is fine, but if I’m skeptical of experts on anything novel, whose information am I supposed to trust? What is a better decision making process?

Don’t we have conflicting needs here? We don’t want scientists waiting for perfect information before providing guidance on a constantly evolving situation but then we are unhappy with the guidance they provide?

[peteradio]

I guess the alternative is basing you choices only marginally on "novel expert" advice moderated by the apparent urgency.